1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to an audio signal processing system and storage medium for enabling easier sound check in a digital mixer that intensely controls acoustic facilities at halls where concerts and theaters are held.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, digital mixers controlling acoustic facilities at halls where concerts and theaters are held have been known. In the acoustic facilities at halls, many microphones and many speakers are used and wide variety of effect sounds are also used. The digital mixer centrally controls how to mix many input signals, how to add effects to the mixed signals, to which output system to output the signals, and so on.
In the mixer, sound check is sometimes performed for parameter adjustment before a real stage of a concert or the like. The sound check means a work of adjusting various parameter values (values of parameters such as COMP and EQ) of the mixer before a real stage. Generally, an operator adjusts the various parameter values of the mixer using, as sample sounds, sounds which are obtained by play of instruments and singing of vocalists in rehearsal. The sound check is work which is desired to be necessarily performed before every real stage in order to set the parameter values according to an environment of the day such as temperature, humidity, and states of instruments and vocalists. However, in the sound check, the operator should adjust parameter values for each microphone and instrument (for each channel) of all channels and therefore it takes a lot of trouble. In addition, players and staffs are busy before a real stage, and it is sometimes impossible to perform rehearsal for enough time to adjust all of the parameter values.
Under the above circumstances, generally, sounds played at rehearsal are recorded in a recorder and values of parameters which could not be adjusted during the rehearsal are adjusted after the rehearsal using the recorded sounds as sample sounds. An apparatus described in the following Document 1 can be used for such sound check. This apparatus can record sounds of respective channels, mix buses and a stereo bus in arbitrary tracks of a recorder, reproduce the recorded sounds, and input the reproduced sounds into arbitrary channels. A user manually sets to which channel the reproduced sound is inputted. This system is rich in diversity of configuration because of use of an external recorder. However, this system has a lot of trouble with connection between the mixer and the recorder and connection between the track and the channel with the possibility of improper connection.
On the other hand, there is an apparatus which has an internal recorder provided for each channel and can record and reproduce sounds for each channel, as described in the following Document 2. This apparatus does not require work of connecting the mixer and the recorder and connecting the track and the channel without the possibility of improper connection. However, the apparatus has a predetermined capacity of memory area for each channel in a fixed manner, and therefore has poor use efficiency of memory. That is, memory area may run out at recording in one channel and on the other hand prepared memory capacity may be too much for another channel even though the channel requires only a small capacity.
Document 1: JP 2002-50123 A
Document 2: JP 2005-229589 A